Tuesday, 26 April 2011

We have three new paintings by Michael J Ashcroft in the gallery this week. Michael also contacted me with some exciting news. He has just been elected to the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. He is following in the footsteps of great artists such as L.S. Lowry, who was also a member of the Academy.

Michael lives in the North of England but he is passionate about painting in Galloway. He especially loves the coastline at Sandyhills, Rockcliffe and Kippford. You can view all the paintings on our web site.

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

I have just posted some new photos of our Flights of Fancy exhibition on our Facebook page.

I thought I'd share some with you here too. Specifically the ones of gallery 4, the room which leads out to our amazing garden. We decided to make this space quite different for this exhibition. I had been chatting to artist Fiona Watson about installing the exhibition and she told me about a bird themed exhibition which she took part in where they used plants and birdsong. I thought this sounded like a great idea and knew gallery 4 at the back of our gallery would lend itself to an installation with plants and bird sounds.

So, if you come and visit the gallery you will hear noises coming from Gallery 4 - the tracks start with British birds and move on to more exotic jungle birds. We also have a 4 foot high Weeping Fig plant, fairy lights, a flying ceramic kingfisher by Sue Dunne and a collage bird box by Fiona Watson.

Installing an exhibition is one of my favourite aspects of my job, and I'm always looking for the best way to present different artwork in the gallery. In fact, we enjoy it so much we have been known to have many change-arounds during the run of an exhibition.